


Growing Things

by starsoverhead



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 14:33:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsoverhead/pseuds/starsoverhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from hotchaolic on Tumblr:  Hotch Reid and Jack go camping</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Things

Since he was eight years old, the outdoors hadn’t been a place to have fun. At eight, after all, he had become essentially a shut in - or a shut out, depending on his mother’s mental state at the time. She so often wanted him to be with her instead of going out to play with the few people he’d called his friends.

As such, those few people had drifted away, found other people, and he’d found his friends within the pages of the numerous books that covered almost every available surface inside the small Las Vegas house. At least his father had left them the house, he’d often bitterly thought, for all it had been both haven and prison until he’d gone into college.

And it was still true that he’d been amazed when he’d moved to Virginia and found out just how green everything was. The desert had had its beauty, between the lights of the city and the stars once you were away from the light pollution. College had been too full of study for him to really notice the surroundings, but California had more than its share of droughts, so even the green places had a tinge of brown.

Virginia, though. Compared to the places he’d been, Virginia was all rich, verdant greens and moist, living browns dotted with flowers in every colour. White daisies and yellow black-eyed susans, tiny little four-petaled bluets and plush purple clover. He’d learned from experience what poison ivy looked like and how to stay away from it. And he’d also learned that while Queen Anne’s Lace was pretty, it was the home to chiggers which were unpleasant little bugs that would burrow under your skin and required treatment with clear nail polish, of all things.

Of course, he’d informed Jack of all this and, while the boy understood well enough, he just didn’t care. Spencer’s knee was aching and he wondered just how Hotch was holding up as they kept walking ever upward in the hills. He was having uncomfortable memories of the series of murders along the Appalachian Trail, children stolen and hidden away in caves, but Aaron was still letting Jack tromp around, running around with the energy that only the young could really lay claim to.

Not for the first time, Spencer was jealous. Aaron was a fantastic father, no matter what his own childhood had been like. Spencer felt like he would give in to impulses much like his mother’s - to shelter and overprotect.

Spencer didn’t realise he’d fallen silent until Aaron nudged him. “Everything okay?”

“Oh, sure, I’m fine,” Spencer answered. “Knee’s getting a little sore, but that’s normal by now.”

Aaron gave him a smile. “We’re almost there,” he said and Spencer felt fingers on his hand, threading with his own, and the contact seemed to make his load lighter.

They made it to the chosen site just in time for golden shafts of light to angle down into the clearing, making it seem like they’d walked into a fantasy story. For a moment, Spencer could imagine Elrond welcoming them to Rivendell just around the bend, but when he looked over into Aaron’s eyes, he knew that he didn’t need Hugo Weaving with a weave and robes to make his life magic.

“You like it?”

“It’s beautiful,” Spencer answered and placed an impulsive kiss on Aaron’s cheek.

Jack chose just that moment to run back with a double handful of wild strawberries and teaberries and wrinkled his nose. “You two aren’t going to get mushy, are you?”

“We’ll try to keep it to a minimum,” Aaron chuckled, but Spencer saw the mischief in the glance Aaron gave him. Who knew that even in the wilderness, where he’d rarely been before, he could still manage to be happy.


End file.
